Review: Brugo Travel Mug

By now every urban legend fanatic knows what a deadly menace too-hot coffee can be. Between the scorched privates and scaled tongues, it’s a miracle anyone drinks this stuff at all.

How do you get your coffee down to a tolerable temperature without it getting too cold? Brugo’s answer is an elaborate travel mug with a unique lid.

Tighten on the custom lid and turn the dial to “tip and cool” then rock the cup back and forth a bit. The coffee (or tea, or whatnot) fills a special channel in the lid designed to quickly cool the drink. You then drink it normally through the usual sippy-cup-style opening.

If that leaves you with too chilly a drink you can always bypass the channel with the “sip” setting and get full-temperature, scalding-hot coffee.

Brugo sounds great in theory but it’s asking an awful lot of a caffeine-deprived sleepyhead at 8 in the morning. Filling the channel with the rocking motion just the right way is the hard part, especially since you have to do that with every sip you take. If you’re like me, you either get no coffee in the sip channel, or you shake it so hard it flies out all over your hand. And it’s still hot when that happens, folks.

Nice idea, but the execution is too tricky, especially while you’re driving. Works fine, though, if you just use the regular “sip” setting… provided you can actually get the lid off…

Available in about a dozen colors. Holds 16 oz. in an ergonomic chassis.